


Indelible Certainty

by HarpiaHarpyja



Series: Two Halves - Reylo Weekly Challenge Flash Fiction [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon-Compliant, F/M, Flash Fiction, Force Bond (Star Wars), Gen, Hand Touch Scene, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, Movie: Star Wars: The Last Jedi, POV Kylo Ren, Rey Needs A Hug, Reylo - Freeform, Reylo Weekly Challenge, TLJ speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-04-03 19:02:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14002551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarpiaHarpyja/pseuds/HarpiaHarpyja
Summary: Speculation on what Kylo Ren felt and saw during the Force Skype Hand Touch in Rey's hut, and how his misunderstanding of that experience led him to make some very poor decisions in the aftermath of the throne room fight.





	Indelible Certainty

**Author's Note:**

> This is my contribution to the first @two-halves-of-reylo weekly flash fiction challenge on Tumblr: "Create a 200 words+ ficlet or a piece of art ‘inspired by’ or ‘in the style of’ the TLJ novelisation."
> 
> I'll be updating this series as more challenges are issued and I actually motivate myself to write responses. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

“You’re not alone.”

“Neither are you. It isn’t too late.”

Wasn’t it? 

Kylo stared across to Rey, still awash with the emotions her confession stirred in him. As if the Force itself knew her need and his, she had laid herself bare before him like he was the only person who understood. And he had let her, because he did understand. How she was drawn into the darkness of the cave; how she saw herself reflected in multitudes; how the life she waited on had only ever amounted to herself, alone; how the reality of her isolation and loss collapsed in on her at last and left her shaking and sobbing and solitary in the cold black heart of the island.

Yet for all of that, those two statements— _neither are you . . . it isn’t too late_ —jarred him more by far. He knew the despair of her abandonment as he did his own. But he did not understand how her hope endured it. Kylo swallowed. It felt as if he hadn’t blinked in minutes. He forced himself to do so and found his eyes were wet. 

Rey reached for him, her eyes glistening too, gaze intent and wondering, lips slightly parted. He looked at her hand only long enough to process its movement and then, unthinking, removed his glove and reached back, his eyes locked on hers. He didn’t know what would happen. 

Would they touch? He longed for the contact, but anticipated disappointment. His hand was trembling. It met hers, fingers just barely touching at first. He felt the chill of her skin, the roughness of her fingers, the steady warmth of her pulse in the Force. 

Time seemed to stretch. Something passed immediately between them, an electric moment of connection, like being grasped and pulled forward. Kylo was drawn out of himself and into her. He had been in her mind before. He invaded it; she fought back in kind. 

This was different. He wasn’t doing this. He didn’t want this.

+++

_It is hot. Unbearable, dry, smothering. If it were real, the tears in his eyes would have evaporated on the spot. But it isn’t real. Not to him._

_Rey idles, ankle-deep in drifting sand. A small girl, underfed and sunburnt, her hand gripped in that of a massive Crolute. The sun in her eyes, she peers up in confusion as her father and mother count out the last of a pouch of credit ingots and clasp each other’s shoulders as if they are the ones in need of comfort. Her father has the same high forehead and sharp chin as she does; like her, the woman is wiry, brown-haired, freckled. They board a filthy second-rate speeder without a backward glance. Rey shrieks and cries as it leaves her behind in the dust and dirt, the cold blue of its thrusters winking back at her as if making a promise._

_She is older now, wrapped in pale protective gear, kicking her way through the dunes. Her back to the sun as it begins to dip below the horizon, Rey lets her gaze slip over the landscape behind her. She traverses these deserts without fear, rappels down the rust-pocked faces of rotted-out Star Destroyers, fights for her meals and sometimes her life. But there are places even she doesn’t go. One place, where the orphaned and forgotten bury their nameless dead. She knows what is there, but the terror of accepting the indelible certainty is too much, so she buries that, too. It is easier to scratch a daily denial into the wall of her hovel, itself a dead thing—a ritual to renew a promise she knows has been broken for years._

+++

Kylo snapped back and felt his breath catch. Rey was still there before him. A tear tracked down her face, and her eyes were alight with revelation. Her focus on him was so intense it felt like she was drinking him in. Did she know what he had seen? Did she see it too? It was another moment before he realized that his surroundings had changed. He could see hers. She gasped and trembled, about to speak.

“Stop!”

He knew that voice, and the signature in the Force that went with it. _Luke._ Within him, Kylo’s response was automatic: hurt, horror, outrage. Whatever power of the Force was cabling him to Rey in the moments before, it shuddered and gave way. Something cracked. Stones flew. As suddenly as she’d been there, she was gone. Kylo sat with his hand still outstretched, fingers curled. His heart hammered as beads of sweat gathered on his brow and neck.

He understood now. Hope was not Rey’s strength. No. Denial was her weakness. Her refusal of the truth was what moored her. She clung. She held on. To a past she sought to overwrite with purpose, to the family she could not let herself accept was never returning, to each inadequate replacement she tried to fill her emptiness with. 

Kylo knew what he had seen. He knew what he had to do. And when he did it, he would make Rey realize what she had to do, too. He had never been more certain of anything.


End file.
